Little Eyes

The follow-up to Stanford, Connecticut’s Ed Askew’s 1969 debut album Ask the Unicorn, is every bit as delightfully unusual as its predecessor. Recorded in the early ‘70s but never released due to lack of funds (it made it to the test pressing stage), Little Eyes features Askew playing his beloved 10-stringed tiple, as well as piano and harmonica for songs that highlight his high-strung voice that often sounds as if it is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Askew has become quite a legend among folks who collect obscure, overlooked folk and ‘outsider’ records and, though several decades removed, he fits comfortably within the emergent ‘freaky folk’ scene of the mid-2000s. Six bonus radio broadcast cuts are added and they’re as powerful as these unadorned studio recordings, which legend has it were recorded in one sitting without overdubs or re-takes. “City of Glass” and “Old Mother Moon” express a desperate loneliness behind Askew’s almost garage-rocker untutored leer, while “Jeffrey Taste” from the radio sessions features his most ambitious and captivating melody.